


tell your stories, tell all of your pain

by ohallows



Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/F, Fluff, M/M, Mermaid Au!, Prophecy, Slow Burn, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-26
Updated: 2019-09-26
Packaged: 2020-10-28 19:28:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20783888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohallows/pseuds/ohallows
Summary: “You will be called the Drifter. It is your job, little mer, to travel the seas, floating along with the current, until someone calls to you. There are a great number of prophecies in the world, little mer, and you are the only one who can bring all of them to fruition. Go, now, and begin bringing peace to all.”Zolf, known as the Drifter, is tasked with bringing prophecies to light. Hamid is a shark prince who’s known his own role in his prophecy since he was born - killing the Drifter to break the curse on his people and save everyone.





	tell your stories, tell all of your pain

**Author's Note:**

> there’s a lack of mermaid fics in this fandom and i’m here to change that
> 
> me, looking at the ocean: that’s a whole seven year old!! A WHOLE SEVEN YEAR OLD

The sea is vast. 

An endless expanse of blue stretching as far and deep as the eye can see. 

A small mermaid swims there alone, tail shimmering a bright silver. Fish swim around him, playing in his hair, while Zolf sits on the seabed floor, staring out at the ocean. It’s almost calm, down here. It  _ is _ calm, but it shouldn’t be, not when his brother is missing. Not when Zolf had awoken, alone, in this strange space, far away from his home.

_ Hello, little mer _ , Zolf hears all of a sudden, from everywhere and nowhere all at once. 

“Hello. Do you know where my brother is?” he asks the voice, and glances around up, down, and behind him. Feryn had been behind him when he’d entered the reef, laughing as he tickled Zolf, and there had been color exploding in every direction as they grabbed a few fish to snack on. Feryn had grabbed Zolf by the tail, slowing him down and snagging the fish he’d been after, and then his face had gone tense, and then Zolf had felt a hand on his head, shoving him down to the reef, and then -

He was here. Alone. 

The voice that he’d heard doesn’t come again, and Zolf feels himself sink to the ocean floor, feeling the first onset of fear sink in. 

“Feryn?” he calls, cupping his little hands around his mouth and trying to make his voice  _ loud _ . That’s what Feryn always told him to do, after all, if he got lost. And then Feryn would show up, and everything would be alright again.

Feryn never comes. 

Zolf shouldn’t cry. His father used to tell him that, sometimes, and then Feryn would come into his room at night and tell him not to listen to their father, that little boys are able to cry just as much as they want to, and Zolf would snuggle into Feryn’s side and let the tears flow. 

_ Little mer, why are you so sad? _ Zolf hears again, and the voice seems like it’s coming from everywhere and nowhere all at once. 

“I’m all alone,” he says, and hiccoughs as he stares out over the trench. 

_ Not anymore _ , the voice says, and Zolf blinks, shielding his eyes as a bright silver light pulses as it moves down from the surface. It dances in front of him, and Zolf wipes at his nose before reaching out and playing with the ball of light, laughing. 

It floats up again, and expands, and then covers Zolf, sinking into his skin. He glows for a moment afterward, sparks of light dancing along his skin before slowly fading away. A small strand of light remains, wrapping around the bottom of his tail, and staining the scales there a bright white. 

_ You will be called the Drifter. It is your job, little mer, to travel the seas, floating along with the current, until someone calls to you. There are a great number of prophecies in the world, little mer, and you are the only one who can bring all of them to fruition. Go, now, and begin bringing peace to all.  _

Zolf feels a tug in his chest and looks down; there’s a shimmering strand pulsating right above his heart, and as he reaches out to play with the light, his hands phase through it, leaving him with nothing but a tingly static feeling. 

He frowns down at it, and starts swimming away - or, well, he  _ tries  _ to. The strand pulls at him, and he turns to look in the direction it’s tugging him in. There’s a castle there, nearly hidden by the surrounding reef, and no matter how hard Zolf tries he can’t fight the urge to swim closer.

The castle looms in the distance, and a content hum passes through the strand emanating from his chest the closer he gets. 

There’s a lone merperson patrolling the outer gate of the castle. They have a strange-looking head, with a fin stretching from their forehead down their back that waves lazily in the water. 

Zolf ignores them, swimming by, only to feel a stern hand pull him back, against the tug of the strand.

“Hold!” he hears, and comes face to face with the stranger, glaring down at him. “How did you -“ the stranger trails off as the spear nearly slips from their hands, eyes locked on Zolf’s tail. “Oh! Apologies, Drifter, I did not recognize you! Please, I will take you to meet our leader.” They grab Zolf’s hand and pull him forward.

“Forgive me, you are much younger than we were expecting. Our king will be pleased to see you.”

Zolf stays silent but struggles to keep up as they pull him along, swimming quickly through the twisting hallways of the castle. And then they’re standing in a huge antechamber, with a long staircase reaching up to the throne of the person who must be the king.

“The Drifter!” he hears, a whispered adulation that sweeps over him, among frenzied murmurs about how their savior has come. “The Drifter is here!”

Zolf shrinks back behind the guard who had brought him into the room, hiding from all of their faces as they turn to him at once. He hates the feeling of their eyes on him, hates how they crowd around him, reaching their hands out to touch him. The stranger keeps people back as best they can, giving Zolf a sympathetic look tinged with adoration, and then the crowds part as the king descends from the staircase halfway, and gestures for Zolf to swim up to where he rests. 

“Drifter,” he says, reverent, and the hushed whispers all around him quiet, but he can still feel everyone’s eyes on him. “Your arrival has been heralded since the beginning of civilization. Please. Go forth and save our people!” 

Zolf follows the pull of the strand, still pulsing in his chest even if he can’t see it anymore, all the way up to a plant growing from the ceiling. The whispers in his head start up again, and he glances at the wall opposite him where a large mural rests. It depicts a small mermaid with a silver and white tail standing in front of a strange shape as light splashes around the gatherers. Zolf closes his eyes and listens to the whispers; they’re different than the voice that had spoken to him before, and feel more disjointed, pushing him toward certain actions than giving him anything concrete. They tell him to swim up toward the plant and touch it, and he does, and as he gets closer, it’s shimmering with an otherworldly light. 

He touches the plant and, just like in the mural, light explodes out of it, bathing the entire antechamber in a bright blue for an instant. Zolf covers his face with his arms and squeezes his eyes tightly shut, waiting for the light to dissapate before opening them a crack, watching as the crowds in front of him cheer. Flowers begin growing everywhere the beams of light touched, out of the walls and through the stone floor, and the merpeople hug each other and race to grab the flowers that won’t stop growing. 

He turns toward the king with a smile on his face, because if Zolf did a good job, he must be happy, but feels a strange shattering in his chest as the king looks heartbroken, swimming toward a nearby group of flowers pushing through a crack in the wall.

“This isn’t  _ right _ ,” the king whispers, holding a pile of dead flowers in his hands. “Drifter, this isn’t what was supposed to happen! The flowers are the wrong color!” 

It doesn’t take long for the confusion to spread among the masses, passing hushed whispers and betrayed cries between them.

“The Drifter didn’t save us?”

“Maybe the prophecy will still come true!”

“He needs to try again! My wife is sick, this was the only cure!”

“Drifter, what have you  _ done?” _

Zolf looks back and forth between them all, arguing with each other and looking at him as though he understands any of this, and shrinks down to be as small as possible as they all move closer to him. He sees an out, through a few of the strangers crowding him, and makes his escape, lump in his throat as he curls in on himself and swims away. The sound of their yells follow him as he swims, and he cups his hands over his ears to block them out, squeezing his eyes shut and moving ahead blindly. 

He smacks headfirst into something hard and cries out in pain, slowly sinking to the bottom of the water as he tries to block out the view of all of their disappointed faces, their shouts, and their confusion from his memory. His tail gently touches down on the sand and Zolf wraps his arms around himself, looking up at the surface. 

“I don’t… want to be the drifter,” Zolf whispers to the darkness. 

Silence is his only response. There’s not even a hint of the voice that had spoken to him earlier, no whispers on the current, and Zolf sits there, helpless, no idea where to go. 

“Please…” 


End file.
